Microsoft's $30 Billion Vista Bump — It turns out someone does like Windows Vista, along with Office and the other stuff Microsoft sells. Indeed, the company sold $1.1 billion more of that stuff in the second quarter than analysts expected. The company's profits rose by 23 percent.

Microsoft Results Turn Heads — Despite reliable growth, Microsoft's unsexy stock has often failed to attract jaded investors. Its spectacular first-quarter earnings have changed that — For the last several years, Microsoft (MSFT) has made good on a promise to beat the "law of large numbers …

Prism — Personal computing is currently in a state of transition. While traditionally users have interacted mostly with desktop applications, more and more of them are using web applications. But the latter often fit awkwardly into the document-centric interface of web browsers.

More Goodies in Apple's New Operating System — In today's Times, I reviewed Apple's latest operating system, Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard." I noted that Apple claims to have added over 300 new features. — Trouble is, if I tried to describe them all in my 1,280-word column, I'd have 4.3 words to describe and assess each one.

Exclusive First Review: Asus Eee PC 701 — Pound for pound, the best value-priced notebook on the planet. — Price: $399 — This past weekend a circular advertised a Vista-powered laptop equipped with a Celeron processor, 14.1-inch display, an 80GB hard drive, and a DVD drive for only $399.

Facebook's Stock Options — Cash is good, and Facebook, following its $240 million investment from Microsoft, now has plenty of it. It might have much much more if reports prove true that other investors have, or will soon, join in. With those lofty sums, Mark Zuckerberg and his crew …

Zune 1-Click Podcast Subscriptions — Podcasters can now plan to display a Zune icon or chicklet graphic on their websites to enable an easy "1-Click Podcast Subscription" process for podcast listeners or viewers. This 1-Click process will launch the new Zune Marketplace software and place …

Nintendo rules out Wii price cut — TOKYO - Fresh off bumper earnings, Nintendo Co. ruled out a price cut for its smash-hit Wii video game console Friday and announced the company will being selling the Wii in China next year. — Profits at Nintendo have surged on the runaway success …

Russians use Geforce to crack Vista passwords — GPGPU given a new spin — PESKY RUSSIANS have come up with a novel way of using Nvidia's graphics hardware - cracking passwords. — INQ readers will long be familiar with the concept of the GPGPU, and the green team's latest CUDA development kit.

UBC tracked his 'theft of time' — Use of spyware in firing of web-surfing employee violated his privacy — The University of B.C. wants the right to keep using "spyware" to monitor its employees' Internet use. — And the university — which used the software to fire a worker …

Leopard backpedals again: No more iPhone note syncing — Looks like Apple now believes that it has said a little too much with the new Leopard feature pages. Yesterday it backpedaled on letting us use an AirPort Disk with Time Machine, and now it appears as though all references to the iPhone …

Global mobile penetration to reach 75% by 2011 — Over half of the world's population will have a mobile phone by 2008, according to new research. — A new report from Portio Research predicts that the global mobile penetration rate will surpass the 50 per cent mark next year.